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EULOGY 

Abraham Lincoln, 

BY 

J. G. HOLLAND. 








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EULOGY 


ON 


Abraham Lincoln, 

LATE PRESIDENT OF TIIE UNITED STATES, 


PRONOUNCED AT THE 

City Hall, Springfield, Mass., 

APRIL 19, 1865. 


BY T. G. HOLLAND. 

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THIRD EDITION. 


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SPRINGFIELD: 

SAMUEL BOWLES & CO.: L. J. POWERS. 

1 8 6 5 . 


Samuel Bowles & Company, Printers* 




EULOGY 


We have assembled to honor the memory of the first 
citizen of the republic. We have come together to say and 
to hear something which shall express our love for him, our 
respect for his character, our high estimation of his ser¬ 
vices, and our grief at his untimely removal from the ex¬ 
alted office to which the voice of a nation had called him. 
Yet the deepest of our thoughts and emotions are always 
dumb. The ocean’s floor has no voice, but on it and under 
it lie the ocean’s treasures. The waves that roll and roar 
above tell no story but their own. Only the surface of the 
soul, like the surface of the sea, is vocal. Deep down 
within every one of our hearts there are thoughts we can¬ 
not speak—emotions that find no language—groanings that 
cannot be uttered. The surprise, the shock, the pity, the 
sense of outrage and of loss, the indignation, the grief, 
which bring us here—which have transformed a nation 
jubilant with hope and triumph into a nation of mourners 
—will find no full expression here. It is all a vain show— 



4 


EULOGY ON ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 


these tolling bells, these insignia of sorrow, these dirges, 
this suspension of business, these gatherings of the people, 
these faltering words. The drowning man throws up his 
arms and utters a cry to show that he lives, and is conscious 
of the element which whelms him ; and this is all that we 
can do. 

Therefore, without trying to tell how much we loved him, 
how much we honored him, and how deeply and tenderly 
we mourn his loss, let us briefly trace the reasons why his 
death has made so deep an impression upon us. It is not 
five years since the nation knew but little of Abraham Lin¬ 
coln. We had heard of him as a man much honored by 
the members of a single party—not then dominant—in his 
own state. We had seen something of his work. We 
knew that he was held to be a man of notable and peculiar 
power, and of pure character and life. Indeed, it is doubt¬ 
ful whether the nation knew enough of him to justify the 
selection made by the convention which presented him to 
the country as a candidate for its highest office. To this 
office, however, he was triumphantly elected, and since 
that time his life has run like a thread of gold through the 
history of the most remarkable period of the nation’s ex¬ 
istence. 

From the first moment of his introduction to national 
notice, he assumed nothing but duty, pretended to nothing 
but integrity, boasted of nothing but the deeds of those 



EULOGY ON ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 


5 


who served him. On his journey to Washington he freely 
and unaffectedly confessed to those who insisted on hearing 
him speak that he did not understand their interests, but 
hoped to make himself acquainted with them. We had 
never witnessed such frankness, and it must be confessed 
that we were somewhat shocked by it. So simple and art¬ 
less a nature, in so high a place, was so unusual, so unprec- 
edented, indeed, that it seemed unadapted to it---incongru- 
ous with it. In the society which surrounded him at the 
national capital, embracing in its materials some of the 
most polished persons of our own and other lands, he re¬ 
mained the same unaffected, simple-hearted man. He was 
not polished, and did not pretend to be. He aped no for¬ 
eign airs, assumed no new manners, never presumed any¬ 
thing upon his position, was accessible to all, and preserved 
throughout his official career the transparent, almost boyish 
simplicity that characterized his entrance upon it. 

I do not think that it ever occurred to Mr. Lincoln that 
he was a ruler. More emphatically than any of his prede¬ 
cessors did he regard himself as the servant of the people 
—the instrument selected by the people for the execution 
of their will. He regarded himself as a public servant no 
less when he issued that immortal paper, the proclamation 
of emancipation, than when he sat at City Point, sending 
telegraphic despatches to the country, announcing the prog¬ 
ress of Gen. Grant’s army. In all places, in all circum- 


6 


EULOGY ON ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 


stances, he was still the same unpretending, faithful, loyal 
public servant. 

Unattractive in person, awkward in deportment, unre¬ 
strained in conversation, a story-lover and a story-teller, 
much of the society around him held him in ill-disguised 
contempt. It was not to be expected that fashion and 
•courtly usage and conventional dignities and proprieties 
would find themselves at home with him; but even these 
at last made room for him—for nature’s nobleman, with 
nature’s manners, springing directly from a kind and gentle 
heart. Indeed, it took us all a long time to learn to love 
this homely simplicity, this artlessness, this direct out¬ 
speaking of his simple nature. But we did learn to love 
' them at last, and to feel that anything else would be out of 
character with him. We learned that he did everything in 
his own way, and we learned to love the way. It was 
Abraham Lincoln’s way, and Abraham Lincoln was our 
friend. We had taken him into our hearts, and we would 
think of criticising his words and ways no more than those 
of our bosom companions. Nay, we had learned to love 
him for these eccentricities, because they proved to us that 
he was not controlled by convention and precedent, but was 
a law unto himself. 

Another reason why we loved him was that he first loved 
us. I do not believe a ruler ever lived who loved his peo¬ 
ple more sincerely than he. Nay, I do not believe the 



EULOGY ON ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 


7 


ruler ever lived who loved his enemies so well as he. All 
the insults heaped upon him by the foes of the government 
and the haters of his principles, purposes and person, never 
seemed to generate in him a feeling of revenge, or stir him 
to thoughts and deeds of bitterness. Throughout the ter¬ 
rible war over which he presided with such calmness and 
such power he never lost sight of a golden day, far in 
the indefinite future, when peace and the restoration of 
fraternal harmony should come as the result and reward of 
all his labors. His heart embraced in its catholic sympa¬ 
thies the misguided men who were plotting his destruction, 
and I have no doubt that he could, and did, offer the prayer: 
“ Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do 1” 
We felt—we knew—that he suffered a thousand deaths in 
the destruction of the brave lives he had summoned to the 
country’s defense, that he sympathized with every mourner 
in this mourning land, that he called us to no sacrifice 
which he would not gladly have made himself, that his 
heart was with the humble and the oppressed, and that he 
had no higher wish than to see his people peaceful, prosper¬ 
ous and happy. He was one of us—one with us. Circum¬ 
scribed in his affectionate regard by no creed, or party, or 
caste, or color, he received everybody, talked with every¬ 
body, respected everybody, loved everybody, and loved to 
serve everybody. 

We loved and honored him, too, for his honesty and in- 



8 


EULOGY ON ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 


tegrity. He seemed incapable of deceit, and insusceptible 
of corruption. With almost unlimited power in his hands, 
possessing the highest confidence of the nation and the en 
thusiastic devotion of the most remarkable army the world 
ever saw, with a wealth of treasure and patronage at his 
disposal without precedent, and surrounded by temptations 
such as few men have the power to resist, he lived and died 
a man with clean hands and a name unsullied even by sus¬ 
picion. Nothing but treasonable malignity accuses him of 
anything more culpable than errors of judgment and mis¬ 
takes of policy. Never, even to save himself from blame, 
did he seek to disguise or conceal the truth. Never to 
serve himself did he sacrifice the interests of his country. 
Faithful among the faithless, true among the false, unselfish 
among the grasping, he walked in his integrity. When he 
spoke we believed him. Unskilled in the arts of diplo¬ 
macy, unpracticed in the ingenuities of indirection and in¬ 
trigue, unlearned in the formalities and processes of official 
intercourse, he took the plain, honest truth in his hands, 
and used it as an honest man. He was guilty of no tricks, 
no double-meaning, no double-dealing. On all occasions, 
in all places, he was “ honest Abraham Lincoln,” with no 
foolish pride that forbade the acknowledgment and correc¬ 
tion of mistakes, and no jealousy that denied to his advisers 
and helpers their meed of praise. The power which this 
patent honesty of character and life exercised upon this na- 



EULOGY ON ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 


9 


tion has been one of the most remarkable features of the 
history of the time. The complete, earnest, immovable 
faith with which we have trusted his motives, has been 
without a precedent Men have believed in Abraham Lin¬ 
coln who believed in nothing higher. Men have believed 
in him who had lost faith in all around him ; and when he 
died, after demonstrating the value of this personal honesty 
in the administration of the greatest earthly affairs, he had 
become the nation’s idol. 

Again, we loved and honored Mr. Lincoln because he 
was a Christian. I can never think of that toil-worn man, 
rising long before his household, and spending an hour with 
his Maker and his Bible, without tears. In that silent hour 
of communion, he has drawn from the fountain which has 
fed all these qualities that have so won upon our faith and 
love. Ah ! what tears, what prayers, what aspirations, what 
lamentations, what struggles, have been witnessed by the 
four walls of that quiet room ! Aye, what food have the 
angels brought him there ! There day after day, while we 
have been sleeping, has he knelt and prayed for us—prayed 
for the country, prayed for victory, prayed for wisdom and 
guidance, prayed for strength for his great mission, prayed 
for the accomplishment of his great purposes. There has 
he found consolation in trial, comfort in defeat and disaster, 
patience in reverses, courage for labor, wisdom in perplexity, 
and peace in the consciousness of God’s approval. The 


2 



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EULOGY ON ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 


man who was so humble and so brotherly among men, was 
bowed with filial humility before God. It was while stand¬ 
ing among those who had laid down their lives for us, that 
he gave his heart to the One who had laid down his life for 
him. A praying president ? A praying statesman ? A 
praying politician ? A praying commander-in-chief of 
armies and navies ? Our foremost man, our highest man, 
our august ruler, our noblest dignitary, kneeling a simple- 
hearted child before his Heavenly Father ? Oh ! when shall 
we see the like of this again? Why should we not mourn 
the loss of such a man as this ? Why should we not love 
him as we have loved no other chief magistrate ? He was a 
consecrated man—consecrated to his country and his God. 

Of Mr. Lincoln’s intellect, I have said nothing because 
there was nothing in his intellect that eminently distin¬ 
guished him. An acute and strong common sense, sharply 
individualized by native organization and the peculiar train¬ 
ing to which circumstances had subjected it, was his prom¬ 
inent characteristic. He had a perfect comprehension of 
the leading principles of constitutional government, a 
thorough belief in the right of every innocent man to free¬ 
dom, a homely, straightforward mode of reasoning, consider¬ 
able aptness without elegance of expression, marked readi¬ 
ness of illustration, and quick intuitions that gave him the 
element of shrewdness. How many men there are, in 
power and out of power, of whom much more than this 



EULOGY ON ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 


I I 


might with truthfulness be said ! No, Mr. Lincoln was not 
a remarkable man, intellectually, or, if remarkable, not 
eminently so. Strong without greatness, acute without 

brilliancy, penetrating but not profound, he was in intellect 

* 

an average American in the walk of life in which the 
nation found him. He was loved for the qualities of heart 
and character which I have attributed to him, and not for 
those powers and that culture which distinguish the majority 
of our eminent men. 

In the light of these facts, let us look for a moment at 
what this simple-hearted, loving, honest, Christian man has 
done. Without an extraordinary intellect, without the 
training of the schools, without a wide and generous culture, 
without experience, without the love of two-thirds of the 
nation, without an army or a navy at the beginning, he has 
presided over, and guided to a successful issue, the most 
gigantic national struggle that the history of the world re¬ 
cords. He has called to his aid the best men of the time, 
without a jealous thought that they might overshadow him ; 
he has managed to control their jealousies of each other, 
and compelled them to work harmoniously; he has sifted 
out from weak and infected material men worthy to com¬ 
mand our armies and lead them to victory ; he has harmo¬ 
nized conflicting claims, interests and policies, and, in four 
years, has absolutely annihilated the military power of a re¬ 
bellion thirty years in preparation, and having in its armies 




12 


EULOGY ON ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 


the whole military population of a third of the republic, and 
at its back the entire resources of the men in arms, and the 
producing power of four million slaves. Before he died, he 
saw the rebellion in the last throes of dissolution, and knew 
that his great work was accomplished. Could any one of 
the great men who surrounded him have done this work as 
well ? If you were doomed to go through it again, would 
you choose for your leader any one of these before Mr. Lin¬ 
coln ? We had a chance to do this, but we did not do it. 
Mr. Lincoln’s election to his second term of office, though 
occurring at a time when doubt and distrust brooded over 
the nation, was carried by overwhelming majorities. Heart 
and head were in the market, but we wisely chose the heart. 

The destruction of the military power of the rebellion 
was Mr. Lincoln’s special work. This he did so thoroughly 
that no chief magistrate will be called upon for centuries to 
repeat the process. He found the nation weak and totter¬ 
ing to destruction. He left it strong—feared and respected 
by the nations of the world. He found it*full of personal 
enemies ; he leaves it with such multitudes of friends that 
no one, except at personal peril, dares to insult his memory. 
Through this long night of peril and of sorrow, of faithless¬ 
ness and fear, he has led us into a certain peace—the peace 
for which we have labored and prayed and bled for these 
long, long years. 

Another work for which Mr. Lincoln will be remembered 


EULOGY ON ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 


13 


throughout all the coming generations is the practical 
emancipation of four million African slaves. His proclama¬ 
tion of emancipation was issued at the right time, and has 
produced, is producing, will produce, the results he sought 
to accomplish by it. It weakened the'military power of the 
rebellion, and has destroyed all motive to future rebellion. 
Besides this, it accomplished that which was quite as grate¬ 
ful to his benevolent, freedom-loving heart, the abolition of 
a gigantic wrong—the emancipation of all the bondmen in 
the land. If he had done no more than this, he would have 
secured for himself the fairest fame it has ever been the 
fortune of a good man to win. To be regarded and remem¬ 
bered, through all coming time, as the liberator of a race,— 
to have one’s name embalmed in the memory of an enfran¬ 
chised people, and associated with every blessing they enjoy 
and every good they may achieve, is a better fame than the 
proudest conquerors can boast. We who are white know 
little of the emotions which thrill the black man’s heart 
to-day. There are no such mourners here as those simple 
souls among the freedmen who regarded Mr. Lincoln as the 
noblest personage, next to Jesus Christ, that ever lived. 
Their love is deeper than ours ; their power of expression 
less. The tears that stream down those dark faces are 
charged with a pathos beyond the power of words. 

Yet I know not why we may not join hands with them' 
in perfect sympathy, for, under Providence, he has saved us 



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EULOGY ON ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 


from as many woes as he has them. He has enfranchised 
the white man as well as the black man. He freed the 
black man from the bondage of slavery, and he freed the 
white man from responsibility for it. He has removed from 
our national politics a power that constantly debauched 
them. He has destroyed an institution that was a standing 
disgrace to our nation, a living menace to our form of gov¬ 
ernment, a loud-mouthed witness to our national hypocrisy, 
a dishonor to Christian civilization. 

The destruction of the rebellion and the destruction of 
slavery are the two great achievements on which the fame 
of Mr. Lincoln will rest in history ; but no man will write 
the history of these achievements justly, who shall not re¬ 
veal the nature of the power by which they were wrought 
out. The history which shall fail to show the superiority of 
the wisdom of an honest, humble, Christian heart over com¬ 
manding and cultured intellect, will be a graceless libel on 
Mr. Lincoln’s fame. I do not know where in the history of 
mankind I can find so marked an instance of the power of 
genuine character and the wisdom of a truthful, earnest 
heart, as I see in the immeasurably great results of Mr. 
Lincoln’s administration. I should be false to you, false to 
the occasion, false to the memory of him we mourn, and 
false to the God he worshiped and obeyed, if I should fail 
to adjure you to remember that all our national triumphs of 
law and humanity over rebellion and barbarism have been 





EULOGY ON ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 


15 


won through the wisdom and the power of a simple, honest, 
Christian heart. Here is the grand lesson we are to learn 
from the life of Mr. Lincoln. You, Christian men who 
have voted, and voted, and voted again, for impure men, for 
selfish men, for drunkards, for unprincipled men, for un¬ 
christian men, because they were men of talent, or genius, 
or accomplishments, or capacity for government, and be¬ 
cause you thought that a good head was more important 
than a good heart, have learned a lesson from the life and 
achievements of Mr. Lincoln which you cannot forget with¬ 
out sin against God and crime against your country. We 
have begun to be a Christian nation. We have recognized 
the controlling power of Providence in our affairs. We 
have witnessed in the highest seat the power of Christian 
wisdom and the might of a humble, praying man. Let us 
see that we remain a Christian nation—that our votes are 
given to no man who cannot bring to his work the power 
which has made the name of Abraham Lincoln one of the 
brightest which illustrates the annals of the nation. 

It was the presentiment and prophecy of Mr. Lincoln 
that his own life and that of the rebellion would end togeth¬ 
er, but little did he imagine—little did we imagine—that 
the end of each would be violent. But both parties in the 
closing scene were in the direct exhibition of their charac¬ 
teristic qualities. Mr. Lincoln went to the theater not to 
please himself, but to gratify others. He went with weari- 



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EULOGY ON ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 


ness into the crowd, that the promise under which that 
crowd had assembled might be fulfilled. The assassin who 
approached his back, and inflicted upon him his fatal wound, 
was in the direct exhibition of the spirit of the rebellion. 
Men who can perjure themselves, and betray a government 
confided by a trusting and unsuspecting people to their 
hands, and hunt and hang every man who does not sympa¬ 
thize with their treason, and starve our helpless prisoners 
by thousands, and massacre troops after they have surren¬ 
dered, and can glory in these deeds, are not too good for the 
commission of any dastardly crime which the imagination 
can conceive. I can understand their shock at the enor¬ 
mous crime. “ It will put the war back to Sumter,” says 
one. “ It is worse than the surrender of Lee’s army,” says 
another. Ah! There’s the point. It severs the rebellion 
from the respect and sympathy of the world. The deed is 
so utterly atrocious—it exhibits a spirit so fiendish and des¬ 
perate—that none can defend it, and all turn from it with 
horror and disgust. 

Oh friends! Oh countrymen! I dare not speak the 
thoughts of vengeance that burn within me when I recall 
this shameless deed. I dare not breathe those impreca¬ 
tions that rise to my lips when I think of this wanton ex¬ 
tinction of a great and beneficent life. I can hardly pray 
for justice, fully measured out to the mad murderer of his 
truest friend, for, somehow, I feel the presence of that 



EULOGY ON ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 


17 


kindly spirit, the magnetism of those kindly eyes, appealing 
to me to forbear. I have come into such communion with 
his personality that I cannot escape the power of his char¬ 
ity and his Christian forbearance ; and the curse, rising like 
a bubble from the turbid waters within me, breaks into 
nothingness in the rarer atmosphere which he throws around 
me. If he could speak to me from that other shore, he 
would say, what all his actions and all his words said of 
others not less guilty than his assassin : “My murderer was 
mad and mistaken, as well as malignant. He thought he 
was doing a great and glorious deed, on behalf of a great 
and glorious cause. My death was necessary to the perfec¬ 
tion of my mission, and was only one sacrifice among hund¬ 
reds of thousands of others made for the same end.” 

Ah, that other shore ! The commander-in-chief is with 
hjs army now. More are they that are with him in victory 
and peace than they whose names are still upon our muster- 
, rolls. The largest body of the soldiers of the republic pitch 
their white tents, and unfold their golden banners, and sing 
their songs of triumph around him. Not his the hosts of 
worn and wearied bodies ; not with him the riddled colors 
and war-stained uniforms; upon his ears breaks never¬ 
more the dissonance of booming cannon, and clashing 
saber, and dying groan; but youth and life troop around 
him with a love purer than ours, and a joy which more than 
balances our grief. 

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EULOGY ON ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 


Our President is dead. He has served us faithfully and 
well. He has kept the faith; he has finished his course. 
Henceforth there is laid up for him a crown of glory, which 
the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give him in that day. 
And He who gave him to us, and who so abundantly blessed 
his labors, and helped him to accomplish so much for his 
country and his race, will not permit the country which he 
saved to perish. I believe in the over-ruling providence of 
God, and that, in permitting the life of our chief magistrate 
to be extinguished, He only closed one volume of the his¬ 
tory of His dealings with this nation, to open another whose 
pages shall be illustrated with fresh developments of His 
love and sweeter signs of His mercy. What Mr. Lincoln 
achieved he achieved for us p but he left as choice a legacy 
in his Christian example, in his incorruptible integrity, and 
in his unaffected simplicity, if we will appropriate it, as in 
his public deeds. So we take this excellent life and its re¬ 
sults, and, thanking God for them, cease all complaining, 
and press forward under new leaders to new achievements, 
and the completion of the great work which he who has 
gone left as a sacred trust upon our hands. 


LB S ’12 


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